How to differentiate your business from your competitors

Using a unique selling proposition (USP) in your promotion and sales activities by highlighting your unique benefits will greatly improve its effectiveness. USPs help your customers to save time when considering buying a product or service by helping them to differentiate between you and your competition and focus on your key benefits. 

But differentiation is not just about finding your USP, it is about aligning your business with your passion and ensuring your primary motive is geared to deliver value and results to your customers. 

Once you have achieved this, you will be able to posture your business to reflect your passion and your motives. Your business will be the only one that will have these qualities because they are unique to you. With this uniqueness, you will now be able to present much more powerful marketing strategies that will differentiate your whole business and not just your products and services from all your competitors.

1. List the products or services you offer to your customers, starting with the product or service that you want to succeed and has the greatest potential.
2. List the main features that deliver value and results and describe what it does with reference to:
   • Quality
   • Service
   • Delivery
   • Price
   • Functional characteristics
   • Technical characteristics
3. Convert each feature into one or more benefits to target your customer. Ask yourself why these key features are important to the customer. List the problems each feature or key fact solves. How does the customer feel about the lack of this benefit?
4. Another way to convert features into benefits is to add the phrase “which means that…” to the feature and consider how the customer benefits.
5. Check if each benefit is standard and found in all competing products, or if different and unique to you (these are candidate USPs)
6. Take a new piece of paper and draw three columns titled: GIVE, SHARE and SERVE
7. For each benefit you see as something you give to your customer, put this in the GIVE column. For example, Cyan Cycles offers  specially selected high quality e-bikes with a 2 year warranty. The feature is the quality e-bikes on offer. The benefit is that the retailer doesn't have to take the risks in dealing with returns.  Warranty goes in the GIVE column.
8. For each benefit you see as something you share with your customer, put this in the SHARE column. For example, Cyan Cycles shares its experience in calculating cadence to help the customer understand and assist in the choice of gears.
9. For each benefit you see as something you serve your customer, put this in the SERVE column. For example, Cyan Cycles serves by providing online retailer support through its ticketing system.
10. Now review each column and consider any additional benefits you could add that significantly improves your offering and is aligned with your posture.
11. Review how you GIVE, SHARE and SERVE and consider how you score against your competition after these additional benefits. With the new found strength in your posture, highlight those areas where you score significantly higher. You can then use this differentiation in your headlines in all your marketing for any product and service. Note: USPs don’t last forever and you need to watch the competition regularly.